This paper documents significant time-variation in the degree of global price convergence over the last two decades. In particular, there appears to be a general U-shaped pattern with price dispersion first falling and then rising in recent years, a pattern which is remarkably robust across...

This paper examines the persistence of relative consumer price indices for 15 regions in Korea including 6 metropolitan cities and 9 provinces over the period of 1990-2016. In particular, we ask if relative regional price indices contain a common stochastic trend and find that they are not. We...

This paper provides a new, unified, and flexible framework to measure and characterize a convergence process. Specifically, we formally define the notion of price convergence and propose a model to represent a wide range of transition paths that converge to a common steady-state. Our framework...

Long-run cross-country price data exhibit a puzzle. Today, richer countries exhibit higher price levels than poorer countries, a stylized fact usually attributed to the Balassa- Samuelson' effect. But looking back fifty years, or more, this effect virtually disappears from the data. What is...

The period 1861 to 1920 witnessed sharp price convergence in British Indian grain markets. Previous research attributed this to the construction of railways. But tests examining price differences between districts provide surprisingly weak support for that hypothesis. Railways mattered, but seem...

This study analyses the level and geographic dimension of China's market integration. The objective is to provide a broad characterization of China's market integration by performing a variety of empirical tests and providing comparisons to other studies on the same topic. The models tested are...